Breakfast links: Tyron Smith's technique

Good morning and welcome to a new week on the NFC East blog. I hope you guys enjoyed the team-by-team look at the linebacker situations Friday. Going to keep those up today and do wide receivers. As always, most feedback is appreciated. Links.

Dallas Cowboys

LeCharles Bentley played four NFL seasons for the Saints and one for the Browns, and he now runs an offensive line academy in Ohio and lives for the study of offensive line play. He's a former colleague of mine from FanHouse, and I like to run offensive line questions by him from time to time. One of his recent pieces is an analysis of Cowboys tackle Tyron Smith and the reason he might see a lot of bull rushes this season because of one specific aspect of the way he lines up.

Consider it a preview of the wide receivers thing for today, but Calvin Watkins takes a look at Kevin Ogletree and his chances of winning that pesky No. 3 wide receiver spot in Dallas.

New York Giants

Giants 101 says that, regardless of the new arrangement to which he and the team agreed regarding his salary last week, Osi Umenyiora is almost certainly entering his final season with the Giants. And while you guys know all about my track record predicting things about the Giants, I think this is a fair assumption. Some reports have indicated that part of the restructured contract contains a promise from the Giants that they won't franchise Umenyiora after this season. If this is true, I doubt the Giants minded putting it in. It's clear they don't want to pay him franchise-tag value anyway, and if they were already sick enough of his griping to give him his raise, I can't imagine they'd be looking forward to hearing what he thought about being kept off the open market another year. I don't think the Giants were ever planning to franchise Umenyiora, and if he does stay beyond this year it would almost certainly be because something (i.e. an injury) happened to depress his open-market value and they ended up able to keep him on very reasonable terms. So, to Giants 101's point: Yes, I think it's one more year and done for Osi in New York.

Not much else happening around the Giants right now, but we didn't touch on this when it happened late last week: Jets coach Rex Ryan is now saying his new goal is for his team to be like the Giants. Christmas Eve morning sure does seem like a long time ago now, doesn't it?

Philadelphia Eagles

Ed Kracz says you can't be around the Eagles these days without seeing, hearing and realizing they're loaded with talent at just about every single position and carry a strong, positive attitude. The question, of course, is whether they can parlay all of it into something big this time.

One of the hot names in training camp last year was that of 2011 second-round draft pick Jarvis Jenkins. A preseason knee injury cost Jenkins his rookie season, but Mike Jones writes that he's starting over with a new knee and those same high expectations that came along with his draft slot and his training camp performance.

And the Washington Times' Sunday feature was on Pierre Garcon, who's perpetually a receiver "on the rise" but is now facing the pressure of being the Redskins' No. 1. It's a job Garcon wants, and he shares the team's hope that he can grow and develop along with rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III.

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